Tag Archives: Bobiverse

After listening to We Are Legion (We Are Bob), part 1 of the Bobiverse series, I was really looking forward to the sequel, which is aptly called For We Are Many. And author Dennis E. Taylor and narrator Ray Porter do not disappoint! Again they succeed in taking the listeners on a fun 9-hours long adventure.

Publisher’s summary:

The highly anticipated sequel to Audible’s Best of 2016 – Science Fiction winner, We Are Legion (We Are Bob); a book listeners are calling “so much fun”, “what science fiction was meant to be”, and what would happen if “Andy Weir and Ernest Cline had a lovechild”.

Bob Johansson didn’t believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a car accident was a shock. To add to the surprise, he is now a sentient computer and the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe.

Bob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. But that’s the only part of the plan that’s still in one piece. A system-wide war has killed off 99.9 percent of the human race; nuclear winter is slowly making the Earth uninhabitable; a radical group wants to finish the job on the remnants of humanity; the Brazilian space probes are still out there, still trying to blow up the competition; and the Bobs have discovered a spacefaring species that sees all other life as food.

Bob left Earth anticipating a life of exploration and blissful solitude. Instead he’s become a sky god to a primitive native species, the only hope for getting humanity to a new home, and possibly the only thing that can prevent every living thing in the local sphere from ending up as dinner.

Listener favorite Ray Porter returns to narrate Bob – and his many incarnations – in all of their geeky glory.

This book is just as much fun as the first part was. Since there are many more Bob clones now, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with who is who, let alone of which generation they are.
It’s still a fun scifi story though, very entertaining and the narration by Ray Porter fits the Bobs’ adventures very well. Some of the audio edits are quite audible – but in that this book is not unique, it seems to be an overall Audible(.com) recording & editing issue.

Be aware that this second book is definitely not a jumping-on point though, you really need to read/listen to We Are Legion first.

I’m rating it 4 stars overall instead of 5, mainly for myself, to keep track of what I like and how much I like it. There are other books in my library that I have given the full five stars because they simply impacted me more.
However, that is not to say that this is not a good book, on the contrary. I recommend this for everyone who liked book 1 and I’m genuinely looking forward to part 3!

I took a bit of a chance buying We Are Legion (We Are Bob), part 1 of the Bobiverse series, not knowing the writer. But the transhumanist premise was interesting enough for me to try it and the intriguing title lured me in all the way. It is written by Dennis E. Taylor and narrated by Ray Porter. It takes 9½ hours to finish.

Publisher’s summary:

There’s a reason We Are Legion, We Are Bob was named Audible’s Best Sci-Fi Book of 2016. Unique, hilarious, and utterly addictive, Dennis E. Taylor’s debut novel kicked off an Audible-wide obsession among sci-fi diehards and new listeners alike.

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it’s a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.

Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he’ll be switched off, and they’ll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.

The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad – very mad.

Listener-favorite narrator Ray Porter (14, The Fold) brings the many Bobs into being in all their glory, delivering a performance that listeners have described as “outstanding,” “nuanced” and a “dizzying tour de force.”

The story didn’t immediately sweep me off my feet, but was enticing enough to hold my interest anyway. I had to get over my expectation of a darker story with more difficult challenges for the main character, including emotional ones, but once I settled in for a more light-hearted kind of scifi, it was an entertaining ride.

This is ‘hard’ science fiction with a smile, with space ships and planets and galaxy exploring and of course space battles. All of that without it being longwindedly technical, and no Deus ex Machinas or otherwise too easy solutions, which I appreciated.

Ray Porter is a fine narrator that held my attention well.

All in all I was surprised to find myself deciding to buy Book 2 (april 2017) and even, very recently, the third installment! So I recommend it, with 4 stars for performance, story and overall.